


Twigs

by swampdiamonds



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, legendarium ladies april
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 17:10:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3818323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swampdiamonds/pseuds/swampdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niënor encounters a stranger in the woods outside Menegroth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twigs

**Author's Note:**

> This story is an excerpt from a longer WIP that I had no hope of finishing in time for LLA. I've done my best to structure it as a standalone.
> 
> Thank you to Heget for taking a look at it for me!

The wind whips the last of the dry leaves off their branches, and on the night before her brother’s birthday it uproots a beech in the hills above Menegroth. Niënor goes out alone that morning. She does not know all the paths yet, but she is learning. As she shuffles down the hill through dense leaf litter, she sees a mourner come to pay her respects to the fallen tree. She has been in Doriath long enough that this does not seem strange to her. The elf is short and dark, with her hair in a simple plait down her back. She sees Niënor, but offers no greeting. Niënor thinks she should not disturb her, but there is no other way down. She is nearly past when the elf says, “I knew your brother as a child. I liked him.”

Túrin is thirty-one today if he yet lives. Niënor draws closer. The elf is short, scarcely coming to Niënor’s shoulder, and fine-boned. A horn-handled knife dangles from her belt. “If you have tales of my brother’s childhood,” says Niënor, “it would be a great comfort to my mother if you would come and tell them to her.”

“I do not go to Menegroth,” says the elf.

She unsheathes her knife and begins cutting twigs from the fallen tree’s branches.”

“Then will you tell me something of him,” says Niënor, “so I may repeat it to her?”

“He was very quiet,” says the elf at last, “and patient. I took him on a time to watch the nightingales at their nesting.”

This is far from the young hothead who, as some in Menegroth would tell it, ran away to launch a war campaign in a fit of pique. Niënor wonders what sort of man her brother was. Would she have liked him?

The elf gathers the twigs into a bouquet and presses it into Niënor’s hand. “Take these to your mother,” she says. “The buds are quick; they may yet open.”

She sheathes the knife and turns to leave. Niënor cradles the twigs in the crook of her arm, uncertain of what has just transpired. “Thank you,” she says, then, “will I see you again? I would like to hear more, if you have more to tell.”

The elf turns back and purses her lips, considering. “I have an errand in Neldoreth. But I will return when the trees are in leaf; you may look for me then.”

 

* * *

 

“That will be Nellas,” says Rilloch when she tells the story at dinner that evening. “She lurks in the trees around here but will never come inside. It surprises me that she spoke to you at all.”

Niënor has heard that name before. “Nellas...is she the one who testified for my brother?”

“The same,” says Rilloch’s husband. “She did come to Menegroth for that. Though she looked so frightened that I feared she might bolt up one of yon tree-pillars like a squirrel.”

He smiles a little at his own joke, then seems to remember who he is talking to. “I mean to say, it was very brave of her.”

“We owe her our thanks, then,” says Morwen, who has been rubbing her knuckles in silence for most of the meal. “For that, and for remembering him today.”

 

* * *

 

“What do I want with a bunch of sticks?” asks Morwen, when they are alone. “The minds of elves are strange.”

Nevertheless, she puts them in water and sets them on the table at her bedside. After a fortnight most of the branches have gone dry and brittle. Morwen tells Niënor to throw them in the fire, but when she goes to do it Niënor finds that the buds of one stem are swollen and showing green around the edges. She changes the water and returns it to the vase. When she brings it back Morwen purses her lips and Niënor thinks that she is angry at her for disobeying, but she says, “I suppose it is a fine stick, as these things are accounted.”

Niënor puts on her best Doriath accent: “Forsooth, Lady Morwen, it is the finest stick in all Menegroth!”

Morwen snorts. “Mind your tongue, daughter,” she says, but she is smiling.

 

* * *

 

The trees outside are still bare. The days are longer now; the equinox approaches and passes in a flurry of activity. Nellas' invitation retreats to the back of Niënor’s mind. It seems like a dream, or something out of a story. But she goes for walks—sometimes with her mother, sometimes with her new friends—and she thinks that it will not be so long before the leaves are out.


End file.
